I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

President Obama Will Sacrifice Bald Eagles To Fight Global Warming

The Obama administration announced last Friday that it will grant industrial wind farm operators 30-year permits to kill legally protected bald eagles and golden eagles without fear of legal repercussions. U.S. wind turbines already kill 1.4 million birds and bats each year, including many endangered, threatened and protected species such as California condors, bald eagles and Indiana bats.

The Obama administration claims this annual bird and bat slaughter is necessary to fight global warming. Sources very close to the President have leaked to me the text of the following presidential speech on the topic, which President Obama will deliver later this week in a parallel universe that I will reconstruct (satire) for readers.

“My fellow Americans,

Hard times demand dramatic action.

Our human-caused global climate disruption has reached crisis levels. Not a single hurricane struck the United States this year. It has been eight full years – the longest period on record – since a Category 3 or higher hurricane struck the United States. This record lack of hurricane activity is depriving the southeastern United States of much needed rainfall.

Earlier this year, the United States underwent the longest period in history without a single tornado death, which has exacerbated human overpopulation concerns. This lack of tornado deaths means more people are using up more natural resources, especially in the American heartland. This is especially problematic as more people in the American heartland means there is an increasing strain on water resources in the heart of our nation.

This year marked the fewest number of U.S. wildfires in 30 years, depriving the western United States of the regular wildfires that have always been a part of nature and are crucial to wilderness regeneration cycles.

U.S. and global farmers this year produced their largest corn crops in history. Soybean production this year was the third-highest ever, with the all-time record occurring as recently as 2011. Just within the past five years, U.S. farmers produced all-time record crops of corn, wheat, soybeans, peanuts, flaxseed, hops, rice, sorghum, soybeans, sugarcane, sunflowers, alfalfa, cotton, beans, sugar beets, sweet potatoes, and tobacco. Similar records are being set on a global scale, as well. It is irrefutable that such record crop production is contributing to our national obesity crisis and is harming our anti-smoking efforts.

Earlier this year, satellite data proved beyond doubt that a greening of the Earth is occurring, as foliage is becoming more prevalent throughout the world, and especially in arid regions bordering deserts. The arid American West is seeing some of the most rapid greening in the world. This sudden, disruptive development is putting immense pressure on shrinking deserts and their ecological systems. Unless we act now, our grandchildren will someday ask, ‘Grandpa, what were scorpions and sidewinder rattlesnakes, and why did humans chase them into extinction?’

In the year 2000, just before my Republican predecessor took office, the United States produced 24 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. We now produce 16 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The pace at which we are reducing our carbon dioxide emissions is appallingly slow. We can no longer shirk our responsibility for all the global climate disruption that I have just outlined. We must act quickly, and we must act decisively.

Climate change deniers will try to divert your attention from the global climate disruption that I have just described. They will point out that wind turbines directly kill 1.4 million birds and bats each year in the United States, while indirectly killing many others by taking over large swaths of natural habitat. They will say that encouraging still more industrial wind farms by giving wind turbines a free pass to kill bald eagles, golden eagles and other legally protected species will merely encourage more wind turbines that will increase the millions of bird and bat kills.

Well, hard times demand dramatic action. Unless we act now, major hurricanes will soon become a thing of the past. So will large-scale tornado outbreaks. Wildfires will become mere folklore. Farmers will grow so much food and tobacco that obesity and chain smoking will reach epidemic proportions. Deserts will be unable to fend off the onslaught of global greening.

Slaughtering millions of this country’s birds and bats each year is a small price to pay to reverse this documented climate mayhem. If wind turbines slice up more and more bald eagles, California condors and whooping cranes in mid-flight, that is the price we will gladly pay to put an end to this global climate disruption. To make an eagle omelet, you have to kill a few eagles.

America’s dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions this century does not absolve us of our obligation to cut our emissions even faster than ever before. I thank you for supporting me in this effort.”

OK- nobody leaked the speech to me. It would, however, be the most forthright environmental speech our current president ever made. Who knows? – Maybe he will embrace honesty and give this speech before the week is up.

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